back in the saddle again...

Just a slave to my 49ers…finishing this in a hotel room in Burlingame, VT as I await their first game. May be happy, may be crying, but at least I’ll see it…but first, let me start with what I wrote during my trip home.
I’ve had a great time at home these last 10 days. Besides the reasons for my visit (getting my daughter started at the local community college, celebrating her 18th birthday, and some doctor appointments) and all the honey-do’s (go to the dump, the recycler, the hazmat, change the oil in the car) and other things (spending time with Naomi and with my parents, following up on a few employment possibilities), I also had time to do some fun things:
· We went down to San Francisco for a free concert in Golden Gate Park, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the so-called “Summer of Love”. Getting there was a bit of a hassle, because coincidentally, the Bay Bridge was shut down, making driving impractical. Instead we took the ferry and a series of city buses (the local subway system, BART, didn’t get us close enough). Still, we got there early enough to enjoy the music and the general scene before it got too crowded. (The crowd was expected to be up to 100,000…but it looked to me like they only got about 40-50,000.) The music, by many of the re-formed 60s bands, was sometimes good and sometimes awful, but anyway, the ‘scene’ was just as entertaining. Some people were definitely trying to relive their youth while others had never moved on. I bought a couple of souvenirs of the day to give to friends.
· We also enjoyed the California State Fair and its Labor Day headliner, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic. For these who don’t know, he parodies popular music – this set included send-ups of James Blunt (“You’re Pitiful”), Michael Jackson (“Eat It”), The Kinks (“Yoda” to the tune of “Lola”), Queen (“Another One Rides the Bus”), Nirvana, etc.
My return flight to Newark was a bit less eventful than my flight out – but only a bit. My first flight was an hour late but I made my connection and got to Newark only 20 minutes late – at 12:30am. I’d intended to take the train and a taxi to my friend Pat’s house, but he insisted on picking me up – since the drive to drop me off went smoothly, he expected a smooth drive to pick me up. Unfortunately he was delayed by construction, got lost in a bad section of Brooklyn trying to avoid it, and then encountered a bridge completely shut down by an accident. We got to his house at 4am. We played a beautiful golf course that day (and the way I was hitting the ball, I saw ALL of it!) and got to bed early because…we needed to leave at 4am the NEXT day to drive to Connecticut and catch a ferry to Block Island, RI.
And now I have a new place to add to my list of favorites. Block Island is a great combination of beaches, green space, and homemade ice cream. (OK, a few nice houses out there too…) A couple of Pat’s friends were already on the island with their bikes, so we rented a couple of mountain bikes and joined them on a tour of the place. We even rode some of the rock-and-root-filled dirt trails that lead to the ocean. Even past Labor Day, there was still a lot of people out there. The afternoon ferry back was a little choppy due to the wind, and by the time I drove up to Massachusetts it was raining hard. Not what I was hoping for on my first night camping, but c’est la vie…carpe diem? I tried to seize the day, but it fought back…
The next day, I visited one of my former co-workers in northern Massachusetts. Although it was still raining, she and her two boys took me on a 6-mile hike up a mountain in New Hampshire, followed by a fine home-cooked meal. I drove down towards Boston to visit another former co-worker and talk about some training we’d previously done together. It was good to get together with a couple of the people who helped me have a successful career. May any future co-workers be as helpful (assuming I don’t stay retired!)
Today I drove towards my next hike, in the Adirondaks, while grabbing a quick hike in Woodstock, Vermont. Burlington is pretty close to the area in which I plan to hike, so even though I’d already been here, I decided it was a good enough place to watch my 49ers (who are getting stomped as I write this). I’ll get up early and post this and get over to Giant Mountain, which was recommended to me by some New Yorkers I met in Glacier. After that I hope to head down to the ‘real’ Woodstock and then into Amish country. Hope everyone’s well!